


Cute and cuddly

by Finsternis



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 17:19:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2740661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finsternis/pseuds/Finsternis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark finally gets home from Brazil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cute and cuddly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Butts_h](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butts_h/gifts).



> Firstly, kudos to amazing Butts_h! Thank you darling for the proofreading and for making me post it. 
> 
> Warning! English is not my first language.  
> Warning2! Nothing happens in this fic. Literally nothing. 
> 
> I actually wrote the bigger part of it before Mark posted the tweet.
> 
> Tweet in question: https://twitter.com/AussieGrit/status/540972914510925824

After a couple of sleepless nights, his body gave in to the usual automatism of falling asleep when on the plane. Mark still didn't entirely wake up after the flight. He walked through passport control barely registering the fact and almost forgot to pick up his luggage. 'Getting old' he thought to himself.

Annie came to pick him up at the airport. She smiled and hugged him gently and he leaned in to her, giving her a tiny kiss on her cheek breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume. Mark felt the small reminder of the dull pain in his muscles and winced a bit.

"How are you feeling?" Ann asked, her hand still touching his shoulder.

"I am fine. I really am."

It wasn't his first crash, it wasn't his last, and it by far wasn't his worst. He _was_ fine.

"Let's go home then?" Ann offered, and Mark nodded, following her to the parking.

Ann took her small Mercedes and Mark struggled a bit to place his bags into the boot.

"Can you drive?" he asked, knowing that it was selfish, but he really didn't want to think about the traffic jams right now. His body wanted more sleep. He also wanted Ann to be busy enough not to query him too much about the crash.

Mark wasn't entirely honest when he said he didn't remember it. Maybe he didn’t remember the crash itself, but he vaguely remembered what caused it. To some extent it was his mistake, he was overly ambitious. The slower car was supposed to keep off the racing line. In Formula One though, not in WEC. A tiny misunderstanding sent both him and the Ferrari into the wall.

Saying he didn’t remember wasn’t an attempt to disguise it, the team had the telemetry, they knew what he did. “I am sorry” was the first thing he said when Andreas called him in the middle of the night. He had never been good at admitting his mistakes publicly though. When Timo and Brendon showed up the first thing Mark did was to explain what had gone wrong, what he had done wrong.

Mark sat in the passenger seat, scrolling through the unread messages. He wrote a "thank you" here and there. Mark closed his eyes and sighed. He was almost home, an hour drive and he would crawl into his own bed and sleep.

He hadn't slept well since the crash. First night, the headache was excruciating and he had to spend an hour on the phone assuring the family that he was fine. He couldn't sleep afterwards either, and therefore had a lot of time to think.

The usual hollow feeling that usually followed the end of the season came as expected. It was over, all the chances blown. The 22 hours of Le Mans. The team orders, this time it at least made sense. Brazil. Brazil hurt the most. Brazil was recent. And he knew they could win. He had 17 seconds lead when he handed the car to Brendon, he had good lap times. With Toyotas spinning every now and then Porsche could win it. They did win it. It was just the #20 who lost.

Mark remembered, in vivid detail, watching their car getting slower and slower. How the chance died lap after lap. Electrical issues swallowed two seconds per lap. Brendon was excruciatingly slow.

For the first time in ages, Mark didn't want to get in the car. There was no point. They were last in their class, there was nothing to fight for anymore. It was worse than Spa. Spa was testing for Le Mans. He was bouncing to get into the car, even being 30 laps behind the leading Toyota. In Brazil it it was all for nothing.

He drove lap after lap, trying not to think of it in context. The season, the race - it all didn't mean anything. It was just him, the car, and the circuit. It had worked. He wasn’t getting any slower than Brendon or Timo had been before, he was driving the crippled #20 on the limit. He was doing well, before it all went wrong.

The all too familiar taste of disappointment still lingered. It wasn't the sharp ugly pain of the 2010 Formula One season. It wasn't the dull acceptance of the three years after it. Belief that he would make it got him through the winter in 2011, but the feeling quickly had been swallowed by the acceptance of his number two role. The 2 on his cap became his curse and his blessing. He accepted the fact that he would never win the championship, but he had the car to fight for an occasional win. The acceptance took the burden off his shoulders. He was not the best, but he was decent. He had achieved something many others didn't.

"Are you asleep?" Ann asked quietly.

"No just tired. Sorry." 

It wasn't even a lie. He _was_ tired; he just didn’t feel like elaborating about the scope.

Ann touched his knee softly, trying to reassure him. Mark hoped she didn't want to talk. He didn't really feel like talking. He didn’t feel like anything but to go to sleep. Preferably forever.

He could do just that in Brazil. He had two days that he was supposed to spend in bed, resting. Brendon dropped by sometime before midday on Tuesday, when Mark started to go crazy from CNN, the only English TV channel the hotel treated him to. Brendon smiled and showed him the pictures from the party Mark missed.

"You went to play bowling," Ann said, as if she could read his mind.

"I watched. Tried to play, but it didn't work out that well."

Mark knew Ann wanted to say something like "you should have rested" and anyone else would say precisely this. But this was his Ann, she knew him too well to start telling him what he should have done.

"I missed you," he said out of the blue. This was the truth, he missed Ann badly. When she called and offered to catch the next plane to Brazil he was really tempted to ask her to come. That would be selfish, though. He wasn't badly hurt, at least physically, and he didn't have a right to ask her to come halfway across the world just to let him feel sorry for himself in her presence.

"Me too. Thanks for that wave," Ann said.

"I don't really remember it. Dad said it saved him and mom some nerve cells. So I guess it was okay. Cute and cuddly mode on, even on a stretcher," Mark laughed.

"You? Cute and cuddly? Where exactly?" Ann laughed. She had a point - cute definitely wasn't an adjective he would want to see in his profile.

"Fair point," he laughed, happy that the conversation drifted into the meaningless banter. He could do that. He wasn't sure he was quite in the mood to do all the "no need to worry about me" routine.

Thanks to traffic, it took almost an hour to get home. Mark took his bags and headed to the door. Simba and Shadow rushed to him the second he opened it. He ran his hand along their spines, smiling, happy to see his boys again.

"I will warm up dinner," offered Ann.

"Do you need a hand?" Mark asked.

"No. It's okay" assured Ann. She washed her hands over the sink in the kitchen. Mark leaned to give her a kiss.

"I'll go have a shower then. I think I still smell of the hospital." It wasn’t really the case, but even after all those years he still couldn’t do anything about his hate of hospitals and doctors.

Mark went upstairs followed by Simba and Shadow. He felt like lying down for a bit, but decided to have a shower instead. He didn’t want to miss Ann’s dinner.

Being at home felt good. Everything that mattered was here, Ann was with him, his dogs, the phone calls from Australia and the invitations to visit, this was not conditional on the race results or on the articles in the press, not conditional on mistakes he made. Ann, his parents, they forgave him all the things no one else would, even he himself. It felt good, and to some extent weird. Pretty much everyone had an opinion about him, pretty much everyone thought they were entitled to have an opinion about him. Ann, his parents, they didn’t have opinions, they were just there. Now at home he had time to rest to soak in the warm feeling of belonging.

He didn't really feel half as tired as after a Formula One season, though. He would love to have a couple more races, a couple more chances. He would love to give it another go, without having to wait until Silverstone next year.

Mark stood under the water, his eyes closed, trying to chase away any thoughts of racing. He was at home, the season was over. He was in one piece and more or less uninjured, which was a pretty significant bonus. He was okay.

Mark came down to the kitchen when Ann was almost done serving dinner. He stroked Kiska, who was sitting on the windowsill and looked into the darkness of the garden.

He didn't really know what time it was, he had spent too much time in Brazil. After so many years, he still managed to confuse the time zones.

"Thank you," Mark said when Ann placed a plate in front of him. He didn't have much appetite really, but the food looked good.

"Luke is at the uni?" he asked. Mark obviously knew the answer. Luke had exams before Christmas, so he was busy studying, but he asked nonetheless. 

"Yes, he's struggling with one of his papers, so he has locked himself up in the library."

It was nice to talk about something other than racing. They finished their meal talking about Luke, about their alpacas, about the holidays in Australia. Mark was looking forward to going to Noosa, to doing bits of his Tasmania challenge. He was looking forward to a less strict diet. It wasn’t half as bad as it used to be in Formula One, but there still were things he liked to remain treats. Otherwise, what was the point?

"Do we have that Swiss chocolate?" asked Mark before he stood up to clean up the dishes. He still felt sore, but it seemed that just being at home chased the pain away.

"Yes, in the fridge, second shelf from the top."

Mark smiled. He always asked Ann to get the chocolate for him for the end of the season. This time he forgot to, but Annie remembered. He kissed her hair and put the kettle on. Some things didn't change.

He felt a bit better now, sitting comfortably at the table with Ann, Simba and Shadow laying at their feet, Kiska purring on the windowsill. As years passed, he learned to leave everything bad behind the walls of his home.

The bittersweet chocolate tasted good, melting on his tongue. Not that he couldn’t afford it during the season, he could occasionally, even in Formula One. But over the years this became a part of the tradition, a tiny thing that didn't change: some bittersweet chocolate to celebrate the end of the season and a cup of tea. He would have a glass of wine, but wine wasn’t really a thing to go with the concussion.

Ann washed the mugs in the sink, while Mark sat on the floor stroking Shadow.

"Don’t you want to go to bed? You must be knackered,” offered Ann.

“I think I will take the boys out first. What time is it?” asked Mark instead of looking at his watch.

“Quarter to five,” said Ann, before her phone rang.

“Too early to sleep then. I will wake up at midnight if I go to bed now. I’ll go walk the dogs,” he announced.

Ann nodded and answered the phone.

Mark put on his jacket, wincing a bit at the dull pain in his ribs and called the dogs. He probably should have left it to Ann, or let them run around in the garden, but it wasn’t like him. When he came back from races, he went to walk the dogs – this was the rule, and Mark didn’t want anything interfere. Feeling a bit sore wasn’t an excuse. He had to act normal. Acting normal got him through tougher times, and exactly this was the plan now.

Simba and Shadow followed him along their usual path. Mark threw a stick to Shadow, dull pain reminded him it wasn’t the most brilliant idea, the Weimeraner happily ran to fetch it for him, but didn’t give it back as he usually would.

Mark decided to cut the walk short when he started freezing, regretting he didn’t have anything except a t-shirt on under his jacket.

He gave the dogs some treats in the kitchen and went upstairs to get something warmer to put on. After the heat of Brazil, the beginning of December in England didn’t feel like a tropical vacation. He considered following Annie’s advice and going to bed, but it was still too early.

He wanted to get rid of the jet lag and to become a functioning member of society as soon as possible. Mark switched on the TV, Chelsea were playing against Tottenham in half an hour, which looked like a nice way to spend the evening, so he stretched out on the sofa with the remote in his hand. Simba attempted to crawl on top of Mark, which didn’t amuse him too much. He let the dog slide behind his back. Shadow followed suit, putting his head on Mark’s hip. He dozed off some time after Drogba’s goal, despite his attempts to stay awake.

When Ann came down to switch off the TV, she smiled at Mark who was wrapped in dogs, she got her phone and took a picture. Maybe Mark did look cute. And cuddly, at least to their dogs. She was happy that her boys were at home. Ann took a blanket and covered Mark, before leaving for her study again; there was work to be done.

Fin.


End file.
